Twenty-First Century Tolkien: Prof Nick Groom and What Tolkien Means to Us Today—Part 2

00:06 - Julia Golding (Host) Welcome to MythMakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and I'd like to invite you to enjoy the second part of my conversation with Professor Nick. Groom second part of my conversation with Professor Nick Grum. So let's talk about the Backstreet film, which I've only seen once, and I saw it once when I was young like at the time it came out. Yes, Obviously it has a limitation in that it finishes at the Battle of Helm's Deep. 00:41 - Nick Groom (Guest) They ran out of money. 00:42 - Julia Golding (Host) But what did you think was the strength of that adaptation and possibly its weakness, if there? 00:48 - Nick Groom (None) if you see that as well, yeah well, I had exactly the same experience of you as I saw it. When it came out, I went with my school friends. I was bitterly disappointed. I was angry about it. I don't start by admitting it. Um and um, I didn't re-watch it for many years. In fact, it was only when I began to teach the Lord of the Rings that I thought that it was the responsible thing to do to watch it again. In the meantime, one of my friends from school, with whom I'd originally seen it, was raving about it and saying oh, oh, it's way better than the Peter Jackson movies. Now you're quite right. This time it does sort of finish in the middle. 01:31 It didn't do too badly at the box office, but the backers didn't want to to continue it again. We've got a radical filmmaker, another bad boy, if you like, of the film industry, somebody. Ralph Bakshi was famous for Fritz the Cat, which is a sort of obscene cartoon about a sort of hippie lifestyle. So why choose somebody like that? Because they wanted to do something different. They didn't want to have a run-of-the-mill Hollywood movie. They wanted this to stand out. They also wanted to carry the audience with them. 02:08 I think from the 60s, the people who had read Lord of the Rings while they were maybe students and showed them that they could then go to the cinema and enjoy a reworked version of it. It doesn't all work, some of it's terrible, but the mix between animation and live action is experimental, and in that I think it does reflect Tolkien's own attempts to experiment with different literary styles. So the technique is called rotoscoping, so you take a, you actually film live action with real actors and then you superimpose onto that animated characters. And he also degraded the film quite a lot by scratching it and adding different colours and so forth, and a lot of it's quite disorientating, full of flashing lights and, uh, rather hallucinatory um scenes. I think at its at its best it's a. It's a. It's flawed. It's certainly flawed, but I think it's got some interesting qualities. The most effective thing about it is its pace. Again, like the borman film, you actually knew that you actually had to make people stay in the cinema, you had to tell the story. So it went bang, bang, bang. And he got that absolutely right, I think. So he got it so right that peter jackson uses a lot of his changes to this structure directly in the Fellowship of the Ring. 03:47 So, for example, the Hobbits are leaving the Shire at the same time that Gandalf is going to visit Saruman. That's pretty much scene for scene in the Bakshi films and the Peter Jackson films. It's not like that in the book at all. We don't know what's happened to Gandalf. We don't find out until they get to Rivendell, where he's where he's been. 04:07 But there are also I you know I'm not the first person to point this out by any means, but some of the most iconic scenes in Peter Jackson's film, such as the hobbits on the road, when the black rider comes they hide under the roots of the tree, for example. That is taken directly from Bakshi. Bakshi realized it was no good just having the black riders in the background in a few mysterious sounds. He wanted to have this very threatening and unnerving, almost confrontation between the hobbits and a black rider and to show that this was something very eerie and unfamiliar and dangerous trespassing on the Shire and really get that sense of threat across much, much earlier than you necessarily get in the book. So in that respect I think it has qualities. To put it another way, the Peter Jackson films would not be the same without the Bakshi film. 05:08 - Julia Golding (Host) I think in the sort of background material for those DVD sets, peter Jackson says one particular shot he did on purpose to honour Bakshi, which is right at the beginning, with the party where they're calling out the names of the hobbits, and he says says proud foot, and somebody shouts proud feet and there's an image of a man, of hobbits, uh, foot, sort of front with the, with a sort of quite an unusual camera angle which apparently is from the cartoon. I don't remember that one, but I think you can. 05:41 - Nick Groom (None) Yes, it is, but I think Peter Jackson is being a little disingenuous because I mean, clearly the scene underneath the roots of the tree is taken astray from it. But I think if you can watch them side by side and you can see how consciously or unconsciously you know Peter Jackson is alluding to the Bakshi film, Any sensible filmmaker is going to watch the earlier adaptations, like any theatre director you know research his earlier productions of a play to see how people have solved certain problems. 06:20 - Julia Golding (Host) I'll tell you. 06:21 - Nick Groom (None) One other thing is that we talked about the BBC radio version. That also is directly inspired by the Ralph Bakshi version, because they take the same actors. 06:33 - Julia Golding (Host) Right. 06:35 - Nick Groom (None) They were keen to, certainly the actor who plays Gollum, whose name Peter. Yeah, I'll have to look it up. I should have checked beforehand. But I mean he's one of the actors who I mean it's a great cast for the BBC version. You've got Bill Nighy in there, for example. 06:53 - Julia Golding (Host) William Nighy. Yeah, it took me a long while to put him together with the Bill Nighy that we all know. We know today. 07:02 - Nick Groom (None) yes, but no, they certainly did carry through some of the same actors. So there is a clear connection going from Bakshi to the BBC version and then on to the Peter Jackson versions. 07:19 - Julia Golding (Host) Peter Woodthorpe. 07:20 - Nick Groom (None) That's it, thank you. 07:22 - Julia Golding (Host) Thank you to Google for providing me with that answer. So, peter Jackson, obviously everybody listening to this, I would think almost everybody will have watched it at some point. Um huge achievement it's amazing, it's an a lot of people's mental furniture for what Middle Earth looks like, for better or for worse. 07:52 - Nick Groom (None) Well, I think the work that people like Alan Lee and John Howe did is phenomenal, yeah, and the visualisation and the detail, particularly in Lord of the Rings films, the actual, tangible, material, physical quality is breathtaking. 08:11 - Julia Golding (Host) So when I criticise it, I usually think I'm criticising something which is like improving upon something good. So there'll be, various choices. I would have done differently, but that's totally with the. I don't underestimate the enormity of the task that they had, but there is a sort of connection between Bormann, bakshi and Peter Jackson in. There were both. All three of them are kind of slightly odd directors to choose yeah yeah, um, because Peter Jackson came from his sort of comedy horror um yeah sure sure. 08:44 So what would you say were the? Well, it says so much to say, but should we just pick a couple of things which you think are the areas which really worked, uh, in terms of giving us a 21st century version of Tolkien? These were, if people remember, these came out right at the beginning of the century yeah yeah, and they sort of set Tolkien up for this century. And what do you think is the room for improvement, the place you'd like to see reimagined or revisited, if someone else takes on this task? 09:16 - Nick Groom (None) It's interesting. I'm going to be controversial and say that one of the things that Peter Jackson does very well, he makes changes that you don't notice. So for those readers who might only have a passing familiarity with the book they might have read it when they were younger that they won't notice, for example, that the film begins as it quite rightly should, I think. If you're making a film, it doesn't begin with a long expected party. It begins with the forging of the rings and then the battle of the last alliance, and that's exactly how Bakshi begins his film as well. So straight away it gets you into an area of the plot that gives the viewer some ground on which they can stand. 10:08 Otherwise it would be rather, I think, impenetrable just to begin in Hobbiton with a party of somebody we'd never heard of before and so forth. But more than that, the words that Galadriel speaks right at the beginning about the world is changing. She never says those words. They're said by Treebeard at the end of the book. But Peter Jackson, philippa Bowen, fran Walsh his co-writers were very good at recognising that you could use Tolkien's words in different contexts, and that's one of the great pleasures, I think, of going back to the book after becoming familiar with the films, that you see the characters in a different light. When Grima Wormtong has that deeply unsettling attack on Eowyn and he says that, what have you been thinking during the night? 11:10 - Julia Golding (Host) The bitter watches of the night, the bitter watches of the night Bitter watches of the night. 11:12 - Nick Groom (None) Thank you, yes, I should have mucked up on this. It's Gandalf who says that in sympathy in the book. It's not Grima Wormtongue who's saying it as a way of you know, this sort of predatory way. So you realise the language is in fact multifaceted, that these lines, these words can be understood in different ways. I think that Peter Jackson is very effective at doing that. There are lots of big changes that, again, you just don't notice unless you're following the films. 11:47 With the book, I think the thing that I was most disappointed by was there was no scouring of the Shire, which I think is a crucial scene because it adds that bitterness to the triumph. And I remember when I saw the Fellowship of the Ring, frodo looks into the mirror of Galadriel we've already discussed that and he sees what looks like the scouring of the Shire. I looks into the mirror of Galadriel We've already discussed that and he sees what looks like the scouring of the Shire. I thought great, they're going to include that. That's very courageous, but of course they don't. 12:20 On the other hand, peter Jackson did step back from some of his more sort of radical changes and you can some of the scenes that he started shooting but then deleted, included Aragorn having a duel with Sauron, which I think would have been a mistake. 12:41 Sauron has to remain remote after he's defeated, when he first loses a ring. So I think all in all it's a huge success. But I would have liked to have seen, you know, the Scaring of the Shire, because you end up with this very long farewell and I know the book has several endings, but the film has just got this very long sequence of everybody saying goodbye and getting weepy, and that's also because you know us as viewers are saying goodbye. We've been. You know, when we first saw it we'd had to. You know we've spent three years watching these movies. So it's partly reflecting the experience of the viewer in quite an interesting way, I think. But I'd have liked to have had a little bit of this sort of bitterness at the end, to go with that sort of sweetness that Jackson wants to end with. 13:40 - Julia Golding (Host) Yes, I think perhaps that's why the next adaptation should be something like a TV series, because they'd have the canvas to do that and you could have its own couple of episodes, even if you're doing a multi-season thing. It would be interesting to see. For me, the the key thing I think the casting is very good. I don't like the choice of having elijah wood as frodo, not because there's anything wrong with elijah wood, it's just by choosing someone who's beautiful and very young takes wrenches the character of Frodo, who is mature and has his own heroism and thoughts, and he's just more interesting in the book than he is in the film. And it does look odd all these grownups sending this basically child soldier off to Mordor. That's not how it feels when you're reading Frodo in the book. So I would have preferred or would like to see I mean, it's fine, leave that adaptation, it's done, it's great, it's got lots going for it. But I would like to see a future adaptation which treats Frodo more like the sort of Martin Freeman age of actor. 14:49 That's interesting, that's really interesting, less of the ingenue abroad feel to him, but someone who is part of it would make his sort of collapse even more interesting, because that's how he sort of mentally collapses later, and that's what I would like to see different. That's really why they did it, because there's all sorts of you don't want someone who, um conflicts with aragorn being. You want to change, you know. I could see why they chose that, but for me I would much prefer to see frodo as frodo from the book. Okay, there's so much to say here we haven't even touched on the. 15:28 Hobbit. So, Nick, have at the Hobbit and tell me, similar to what you've just said about Lord of the Rings, what you felt was right and what was wrong. 15:39 - Nick Groom (None) Yeah, the Hobbit's a very different beast to the Lord of the Rings films, and Peter Jackson and his co-writers, I think, are being deliberately playful. Um, I mean, obviously it's an extravagance to make a three movie um a series out of, out of a short children's uh book, um, and they have to invent a lot um as well, and they uh play so much not not this time with the material props, which is such a strength of the Lord of the Rings, but there's so much that's computer generated imagery, and so you get these stupendous scenes of Smaug's hoard, which is just tons and tons and tons of gold which would wreck a global economy if it was ever let out of the mountain. But I think that he's really wanting to show you things that you can't really imagine. He was, he'd done that once before, um in the lord of the rings, and in fact I was in two minds whether to go and see it. Um, when it's uh, I heard about it until I saw a south bank show um when they uh had a um, some of the scenes uh from eisingard. I thought this is amazing. The visualisation here is incredibly impressive, and so of course I went to see it and was pleased that I did. 16:59 I think Peter Jackson is trying to do something similar, but at the next level, in the Hobbit. So everything is sort of far bigger. There are thousands more in the armies. The whole thing is protracted. It's a much sort of far bigger. There are many, there are thousands more in the armies. Um, the whole thing is protracted, it's, it's much sort of longer. Um, experience, um, and you know, I think that that's, I think that's fine, um, I don't, I don't, I don't see a problem with that, but the move is grossed almost as much as the lord of the rings once did. So in financial terms, there is success. Um, have they aged as well? Probably not, uh, but I think they have enough sort of interest. And again, you can't really legislate and say to people well, you can't read the book until you've um, and you can't watch the movies until you've read the book, for example. So all of these adaptations are becoming part of an ever-growing Tolkien world and viewers and readers will enter it at different points. 17:55 I think, and because of the ubiquity, particularly of the Peter Jackson films, you really have to accept that they are part of this Tolkien multiverse now, and I mean, I'm trying to look for the positive aspects rather than the negative ones, because people do love them. I mean, my children, for example, really enjoy the Hobbit films. They've both read the Hobbit several times but they like the imaginative playfulness. They also like the fact that there's a very strong female character. They also like the fact that there's a very strong female character. So I think that sort of the introduction of Toriel is essential for a 21st century audience. 18:38 But they did make the interesting decision to keep all of the dwarves as well and try to give them different characters. Some of them in the book aren't nearly so well developed, nearly so well developed, and they also do keep the darkness of characters getting slain at the end, which is of course what CS Lewis said about it. It begins like a children's story and ends like a Norse saga, and that combination of different styles, of different moods and tones I think is something that Peter Jackson sort of succeeds in conveying. One of the things that I suggest in my book the way that Tolkien wrote was very unplanned. It was very exploratory and he was trying all sorts of different things and he was adapting material himself, and I think you get an element of that in the Peter Jackson films, there's a sense that we're exploring, we're going through this world or this adventure with the characters rather than looking down at them. 19:43 It's what Terry Pratchett said about Lord of the Rings. He said he felt that you were living the book when you were reading it. And part of the reason for that is that Tolkien didn't know where he was going with the book when he were reading it. And part of the reason for that is that sort of tolkien didn't know where he was going, uh, with the book. Um, there's a lovely letter, um, when somebody asks him, uh, has obviously asked him how, how is the book going? And he says, well, we're still in the shire, but these black riders have turned up and I've got no idea where they've come from. So he, he had a map, but he didn't have a plan. And so you get these radical changes of direction. 20:16 Um, the tree beard was originally going to be an evil character. Now you can see an element of that in old man willow, I think. And then the who owns, uh, but you know he's, he's constantly changing his mind and adapting, um, and sort of shifting his perspective, and I think that that quality of the book is something that you do get in the Peter Jackson films where he's filming, you know, way more scenes than he has to, with different inflections, and then he's putting them together in different ways. They are in different ways because the theatre release is not only shorter, obviously, than the DVD release, but he actually uses different takes of certain scenes to give a different character to the DVD release than he might see on the cinema release, and so it's not simply adding scenes, it's actually using different versions of the same scenes. 21:13 - Julia Golding (Host) I've always felt that a couple of things that are problematic for me is he was using the revolutionary frame rate thing, which to my eye doesn't quite look right, because I've got a problem, my brain's got a problem with it. It feels particularly in the goblin caves. I can't, my eyes don't read it as real. That's my problem. Maybe a modern generation brought up on video games would find that just fine, and your kids are fine. But I also feel there were some really good changes. So I thought developing the politics of Lake Town so that. 21:53 Bard has a purpose. A history was really. That was a good change, but I felt the pacing was very wrong and that you could probably take the material of the three films and make two really good films out of it, particularly the vastly overindulgent Last Battle. 22:14 - Nick Groom (None) Yeah, the Last Battle is never ending. 22:17 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah. 22:18 - Nick Groom (None) But he couldn't let it go and he also wanted to give it the sense of a battle. He was using a handheld camera. He was doing a lot of the techniques that sort of CNN war reporters used to try to get that immediacy. But if it had been two movies we'd all be saying, well, why isn't it three? 22:37 You know everybody wants to have another movie of Lord of the Rings and I think that because that's you know, there's hours and hours of footage for the Battle of Helm's Deep and I think that maybe with the Battle of the Five Armies, he was thinking well, we've done one extraordinary fantasy battle scene. 22:59 - Julia Golding (Host) Let's try and you've got to top it. Nick, if you've still got time, I'd like to ask you about Rings of Power because you've updated your book to include it, because originally, when it first came out, it was in you about Rings of Power. Because you've updated your book to include it because originally, when it first came out, it was in advance of Rings of Power and now you've got a new chapter, looking at, presumably, just the first season rather than the second. Is that correct? 23:22 - Nick Groom (None) That's correct. So the book, when it was first published, came out on the day that the Rings of Power was first broadcast, which made there's some comments on lines and they said why didn't they include rings of power? I said we'll publish on the same day, but I thought that I owed it um to um you know, talking readers and uh watchers of the movies um to to say something, um swiftly about the Rings of Power. Incidentally, that extra chapter is available from the Tolkien Society so I didn't want people to have to buy the book twice. So if you're a member of the Tolkien Society you can get access to that material. But again, I wanted to see how Rings of Power followed on from the Peter Jackson films, because there are again there are sort of clear references and there is, you know, john Howe is being used again for the visual material. There was Howard Shaw's theme music was used in part uh for it and it seemed to be a return to that, to the material culture of the lord of the rings, using less cgi and using more of the uh real sort of weapons and armor and sort of building places like the port at in Numenor, for example, and like lots of, like little details which I found fascinating, such as I think I mentioned the fact that they had fish frying on the set of the Numen of Numenor, so the actually would just be sort of have this sort of atmosphere of being at the coast. Of course, you can't tell that when you're watching it, but I think that ambition is something which should be applauded, really, in trying to develop that sense of realism. 25:26 I really enjoyed the Rings of Pearl, I think it was. I'm not going to give anything away to people who have not seen it, but I think that the arc of season one was very, very effective and very unexpected and I know that again it's going to be a lot of material made up and added, but I think that it's actually knitting together um in quite a nice way. I like the way they're combining uh the, the plot lines that they do um have and there's also some fantastic um acting. The casting is is good and again there are strong female characters, but they're flawed. You know galadriel is sort of like this brilliance of psychotic warrior, but she's also got this, you know, towering sense of. You know it works very, very well. I also enjoyed it because it's it has a humanity to it again, and I've used that word before, didn't? 26:50 I didn't like game of thrones. I found game of thrones to be, um well, immoral or amoral. Really I should be saying, uh, brutal, unnecessarily violent. Um, the rings of power doesn't have that it's. It's got a very different mood, a very different atmosphere and uh, to me it's about the importance of collaboration, cooperation, communication, and I think it develops those themes in very positive ways yeah, I I don't agree with you about very few people do in fact, I've been trolled online I'm not trolling you, no, no, I know you're not trolling. 27:33 No, I'll troll online simply for saying that we should give rings of power um a chance. 27:38 - Julia Golding (Host) I agree with you about the production values entirely in the casting. I think the problem in the first season, which they managed to um correct to a certain extent in the second season, is that they had too many storylines which weren't connected um. So what happens if you do that in a screenplay is that you find your. It happens in multi-point of view big fantasy series like wheel of time. People like certain storylines and not others, and so they lose contact with some parts of the world and it's not clear where everybody is. 28:14 So if you think about Lord of the Rings. You've got somebody sets off, other people join them, you get to know them and then they split. It's a complicated interlaced structure but it does have a thread. They were sort of trying to do that with Galadriel, but because her story doesn't connect to the Stranger and the Hobbits and for a long, long, long time it doesn't connect with Bronwyn and the sort of southern lands that it feels as though it's falling apart and the pacing was very strange in the first season because they suddenly make the rings in all of a sudden. 28:53 It's like here they are, it's rings of power and here are the elven rings. It was a very strange pacing. I felt a lot of that I think was corrected in the second season and I thought the kind of almost shakespearean level of tension between Annatar and Celebrimbor was wonderful, a sort of Othello-Iago match up. 29:16 - Nick Groom (None) Yeah, yeah. 29:17 - Julia Golding (Host) And I also, and getting some answers was also pleasing, because you know, when you withhold answers for too long, it's not fair on your watchers. So hopefully I'm hoping that if they the upward trajectory and learning that the the way to hold a story together, um will improve, uh, so that your season three is even better I'm not worried about the liberties with the material so much because, going back to our, these are adaptations, you know. 29:51 Fine, ok, right. So I'm glad you're enjoying it. I'm watching it and semi enjoying it, so you know I'm sort of in the camp. 30:02 - Nick Groom (None) I suppose I'm enjoying it from the point of view of trying to think of ways in which its challenges are, you know, tolkien up to this point, and by Tolkien up to this point I mean Tolkien plus history of Middle Earth, plus the Peter Jackson movies, plus Bakshi and everything. So I sort of just see it as more parts of this ever-expanding jigsaw. 30:28 - Julia Golding (Host) Last piece of the jigsaw is have you managed to catch up with War of the Rehirim and do you have youth? 30:35 - Nick Groom (None) Yeah, I've only seen it once. I went with my wife. We had a very short run where we live. I was back at Christmas and I was in two minds but I knew that I owed it to my own research interests really to go and see it and I really enjoyed it Again. I probably sound like an uncritical moviegoer, but we both really enjoyed it Again. The female characters are very strong, got no sense of humour. 31:09 I think that's the big difference between the other, both the Rings of Power and the Peter Jackson films and also, to an extent, the BBC radio adaptation. What I really liked about it it's just absolutely full of references to the other adaptations, really stuff with references going back to Bakshi, to the Peter Jackson movies, um, and also to the Rings of Power as well, and that way of filmmakers making those references and those connections, um, I thought was was was really interesting. It was. It's almost like a. It's not exactly like a patchwork. That gives the wrong impression. It's taking these motifs and using the motifs as part of the lexicon of making a film, I think, and I really enjoyed that. I thought it was very effective. I do need to see it again though. 32:02 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, I thought it was a really good stab at a story. I actually would like to see a live action version of it Because I think a lot of the humour would come through with actors' performance which doesn't, which an anime doesn't. My problem with the film was the cartooning, because anime doesn't cope well with horses, for example the movement of horses. 32:29 So it looked. It just looked a bit strange, and the way that Hiro would have a very white face all of a sudden in one frame, there was something strange about the colourisation of it as well. So I like the story, but I would love to see it done with actors. So there you are, peter Jackson. Next, see what Disney does Be a live action version, that's true. Would love to see it done with actors. So there you are, peter jackson. 32:47 - Nick Groom (None) Yeah, next, I think I think what disney does be a live action version that's really a real action, like lion king I think, it's also um an attempt to um appeal to, well, the market here in southeast asia, um really, which, uh, I mean it has a much richer tradition of those anime films. Um, so I think it's exploring, you know, different representations in that way, but I haven't learned more about anime films overall. 33:12 - Julia Golding (Host) Well, thank you. That's a lot of material to cover in the last 100 years. So I'm going to put you on the spot. If you're going to a desert island and you can only take one adaptation with you along with the novel, which one are you going to take? 33:30 - Nick Groom (None) oh, what a difficult question. 33:31 - Julia Golding (Host) You didn't tell me you were going to ask no, no, no, I sprung this one on you because I was. 33:35 - Nick Groom (None) I've been thinking about it it'll be a toss-up between the bbc radio version and the peter jackson lord of the rings. I think I would probably take the BBC radio version because I think that the characterisation it's such a strong cast and they do such a good job. And, as you sort of said earlier, the pictures are better when they're on the radio. So you do think about it in different ways, but it's not an easy choice. 34:10 - Julia Golding (Host) There is one adaptation which you probably haven't had a chance to see, which is the musical. It was originally on at Drury Lane and kind of bombed or didn't do very well, but it's been revived recently by the Watermill Theatre in Newbury, which I had the privilege of seeing. 34:24 - Nick Groom (None) Oh, you've seen it, I'm lucky. 34:25 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, because it's near where I live and it's brilliant and it's a cheat to take a whole cast with you to a desert island, because no longer is it desert. But what's so wonderful about that adaptation and I hope they continue to do it in small venues is because I think that's why it failed at Drury Lane is it feels like this is the hobbits telling the story to future generations. Right, and it starts with like a you, as the audience, become part of the party and bilbo comes around saying hello to you and they've got music and dance and great actors playing. 35:03 It's just really, really fun. Everyone plays musical instruments, carries musical instruments with them. But the choices in the second half, where they've got to compress everything, what they do is they make um, rohan and Gondor one place right, and I love the idea that the hobbits those places down south, you know those places with kings. They make them all one and off and off they go, and the story just sort of embraces that and it's got a really rural delightful atmosphere to it. 35:33 So, um, possibly that's my favorite adaptation of all, yes, but that's only available to those who can get to see it. I think they're putting it on in chicago or it's gone to amer, but I fear it's lost its rural roots once it goes back into a large theater. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 35:53 - Nick Groom (None) I was certainly going to see it. If I get the channels, yeah, what? 35:56 - Julia Golding (Host) I did tell you we were going to do is to finish off, is I always ask my guests where in all of the fantasy worlds you can go to. Star Trek, star Wars, secrets of NIMH I don't mind, you can go to Star Trek, star Wars, secrets of NIMH, I don't mind, you can go anywhere. Where would you like to be in lockdown? Because you started your life in Macau in lockdown? What fantasy world would you? 36:20 - Nick Groom (None) like to go into lockdown. 36:21 - Julia Golding (Host) Well. 36:21 - Nick Groom (None) I've actually been thinking about this and I'm afraid that you'll never have heard of the place I'm going to say no it's exciting to hear a new place. 36:30 When I was I mean in the 1980s so this is before, obviously before the internet is, when you know we played Dungeons and Dragons at school very popular. 36:44 And then I got into doing postal role-playing games and there was a game run by somebody from Cornwall called Rob Knott and he produced a fanzine called the Lankmar Star Daily which is named after a Fritz Lieber land, and he set his role-playing game within the environs of the Lankmar Star daily and so basically, I remember one summer you would sort of send pages and pages of what your character was going to do and then you'd wait days or possibly weeks for Rob to respond with a long, tight-written letter and I found it completely immersive. 37:37 I mean it sounds very, very rudimentary compared with the computer games today, but it's because it was purely creative, purely imaginative, and it was really interacting with Rob running the game and also with other characters as well, because you could write to them. So it's very old-fashioned technology of letter writing, but it meant that you were trying to express yourself and communicate and really enter another world. So that's the world that I would like to be in if I was under lockdown. I should just add as a footnote that I would like to, uh, be in if I was under lockdown. I should just add as a footnote I wouldn't want to be in middle earth because it's too depressing, it's too dark and everything's collapsing yeah, yeah, I think, um, what you have made me think of is actually one place which many people sort of went to. 38:24 - Julia Golding (Host) Um, it's like the world of Jumanji, so that you, um you, live digitally right during lockdown. So I was thinking, actually that's not too bad because you're not, you can physically be with other people in a digital world, but whilst you are sort of stuck at home, but yet it has a reality, so maybe that would be, um, not a bad place, and I think many people kind of did go into a sort of jumanji existence. 38:51 - Nick Groom (None) It's a I think you're right. It'd be nice if we were to start writing letters again, even if we did have to disinfect them yes, oh gosh, those were the days. 38:59 - Julia Golding (Host) Let's hope that never comes back. So, nick, thank you so much for um spending so much time with us, and it's been fascinating and I look forward to hearing yet more of your thoughts as we. I think we're going to hit a lot more tolkien adaptations as the years pass, particularly as he some of the works edge out of copyright. 39:19 - Nick Groom (None) That's going to be interesting time I don't, I don't know, I think. I think the tolkien estate will keep a strict. 39:26 - Julia Golding (Host) Life plus 70,. 2043 is when it's going to hit. 39:30 - Nick Groom (None) Yeah, we'll see Not the Silmarillion, because that's Christopher Tolkien. Well, they also haven't sold the rights to the Silmarillion. I mean, it'll be interesting. I think that they're going to be quite carefully controlled. So I'm afraid it won't be in my lifetime. 39:44 - Julia Golding (Host) Well, we've got CS Lewis going up copyright. 39:46 - Nick Groom (None) first He'll be a test case, I think 33. 39:50 - Julia Golding (Host) Right, a test case? Yeah. 39:53 - Nick Groom (None) But we've got a lot to look forward to and I think, as I sort of said before, that this is a nettle that we have to grasp. I think that it's really untenable to be a purist about Tolkien. We've got to see that there are different Tolkiens that are you know whether we're just going to look at the book or whether we're going to accept the adaptations, but you can't separate them anymore. Really, when you see Ian McKellen, you think of Gandalf I wonder whether he does when he looks in the mirror. But also, you know, it's difficult to forget those characters, those actors, when you're reading the book. 40:28 - Julia Golding (Host) So it's difficult to forget those characters, those actors, when you're reading the book. So, nick, perhaps can I invite you back once we've had Hunt for Gollum, absolutely. 40:32 - Nick Groom (Guest) And we can have another chat. 40:33 - Nick Groom (None) That'd be great fun. 40:35 - Julia Golding (Host) So thank you very much, nick. Thank you for joining us. 40:37 - Outro Voiceover (None) It's been lovely talking to you, Julie. Thank you so much. 40:46 Thanks for listening to Mythmakers Podcast Brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. Visit OxfordCentreForFantasy.org to join in the fun. Find out about our online courses, in-person stays in Oxford, plus visit our shop for great gifts. Tell a friend and subscribe wherever you find your favorite podcasts worldwide.